Routine
by brightspark
Summary: Laguna doesn't understand how they can pick up the pieces so fast. Lagunacentric, one shot.


"Laguna?"

The question stung, like a bullet in my back, unexpected and cruel. It wasn't meant to be. But everything did that day. That day that I learned... "The Commander of Balamb Garden... Squall..." The words stuck, and I couldn't get them out. A deep breath and then the words rushed out. "My son is dead."

Kiros paused there for a moment, processing that, his eyes no doubt reading my stance, my voice, trying to see how I was taking it. Finally, he moved, coming up behind me and putting a hand on my shoulder. I let him comfort me for moment. He didn't disturb the silence, and I was glad. For once in my life, I met grief with silence. The silence ached.

"Garden?"

"That young woman..." I took a breath, remembered her name. "Xu. She has taken over Squall's job already. That friend of his... Quistis Trepe... she called to let me know." I hated my voice. When Raine died, my voice trembled, and if it didn't, I had made an effort to strengthen it, to be the president of Esthar dealing with the traitor that was my grieving self, instead of myself. I hated that persona. I sound like a SeeD.

"They're so quick to pick up the threads," Kiros said, with a kind of grudging admiration in his voice. I didn't admire it. How could it be admired? _My son is dead_.

"They say it so coolly. 'Laguna Loire, you are the listed next of kin for Squall Leonhart, so it is our sad duty to inform you of his death. We'," the royal we, as if she, Quistis, was speaking for the whole of Garden with just that soft woman's voice, and she hadn't sounded sad, "'share your grief and assure you - '"

"Laguna," Kiros interrupted, his voice soft. He didn't like the way I was speaking anymore than I did. He tried to soothe. How could I be soothed? _My son is dead._

"- 'that all possible investigations have been made and we can confirm that' -"

"_Laguna_," he repeated, softer, but firmer all the same.

" - 'his death was a result of a regrettable, but unpreventable accident'," I finished.

"Hush," Kiros said, as if I was a child, and I let the strength and knowing of his voice support me for a minute. He knew how I felt. He was my best friend, of course he knew. He knew me better than anyone. He put his hand on his shoulder, putting pressure on it to make me turn, and I obeyed. "Calm down."

"I don't _want_ to calm down. They're calm enough for everybody," I said, bitterly, surprised at hearing the notes of hysteria in my voice. _My son is dead_. I took another deep breath, steadying, lifegiving, and suddenly wondered if I was stealing the air Squall should have been breathing. "Kiros, they lost one of their own. They were raised beside him, trained with him, they saved the god damn world with him, and they just go on with their _routine_."

"Calm down," he repeated. We weren't the type of friends that hugged all the time – that would never have been tolerated in the army, anyway – but he was there when I most needed and he let me rest my cheek against his shoulder, lean against him and borrow his strength, and his presence was enough. I wanted to cry. My _son_, the last link to Raine, the last piece of _my wife_, is _gone, _as if he never was. As if she never was.

"How can it be _routine_?" I whispered.

"You know the answer to that," he said, softly. "For them, it has to be. You know who they are."

Child soldiers. _Children_ trained and thrown into battle, deadening their feelings out of necessity. It's not who they are, it's _what_ they are. Fighting machines. But I fight that knowledge anyway. My son was a _person_, not a thing. They _must_ grieve for him. "I'm an old man -"

Kiros snorts.

I recovered enough to glare at him, hating that he found something funny in what, for me, isn't a funny situation at all. "- compared to _them_, even if I don't act it, and I can't get over people dying around me. How can they be _used_ to death, how can they make it a _routine_, when I can't even think of the idea of my friends dying without feeling lost? How can they be _prepared_ for losing their friend, their ally, their _commander_?"

"They're mercenaries," he said simply. "They've been trained to carry on no matter what. For them, the important part is finishing the mission and being paid. Deaths happen in that. Your son knew and accepted that as well as they have. He would _expect_ them to carry on."

"It shouldn't be like that," I snapped.

"I know," he said, with a shrug. "But it's a necessity of their lifestyle."

I pulled away from him, finally, collecting the pieces of my smile from where they had fallen when Quistis started her little cold stiff speech. I smiled in a little embarrassment as I pulled away from Kiros, walking to the window.

"A man should never have to worry about burying his own son," I said softly, feeling the weight of my words in my mouth.

"It happens, in wartime."

"We're not _at_ war."

"True," Kiros agreed, coming to stand beside me.

Squall, my son, is dead. There's a new commander in Garden already, in that office that was _him_ all over. Efficient, bare, tidy, quiet. A perfect reflection of the top layer of his personality. I wonder if the new commander... Xu feels his ghost in that reflection. Probably not. She's a mercenary like he was, trained to carry on. Probably trained not to give in to such childish whims as feeling _ghosts_ in a room.

Xu buries my son in paperwork, and somewhere, I know two young men will drown him in alcohol for one night of remembrance. His girlfriend grieves, unlike them, but she finds her feet quickly and recovers. I always wondered if she really loved him. His best friend... I never knew the man well. I only knew the enemy he became. But Squall told me about him, in that passionate, eager tone that made me wonder how close they really were. How he had been controlled. How he, and here Squall would roll his eyes, hadn't passed his field exam _again_. About his dreams. About talking, and stars, and wine, and dreams.

With Squall's life ended that young man's, too. I wonder if, with all his romantic notions, he felt the coldness too. Maybe that's why he never made SeeD. Maybe he didn't like the routine any more than I do. Maybe that's why he killed himself.

The dead tell no secrets, so I guess we'll never know. I buried my son today. But unlike the SeeDs, I can't bury the few memories of him. What could he have been? His hands were quick, and without the gloves, slender. He could have been... something. An artist. A musician. His hands were soft, like his mother's. He could have been so many things... instead he was a mercenary. And now he's dead.

I can't pick up a routine again. I'm not a SeeD, not a soldier. I'm a father who buried his son.


End file.
